Personal, portable dispensers for various liquid products are generally known. These fluid dispensers include various types. In some of the simplest forms, portable dispensers are provided as containers that can be selectively opened or closed to dispense the liquid product therein. In some embodiments, these containers give to pressure in order to allow their interior volume to be temporarily decreased in order to dispense some of the liquid product retained therein. These types of containers are very popular for carrying around hand sanitizer, hand cleaner, and hand lotion.
Hand sanitizers, hand cleaners, and hand lotions are also dispensed through the use of dispensers employing positive displacement pumps. Some of these dispensers are sized sufficiently to be portable. These portable dispensers include a piston head that is pushed to dispense liquid product from the main container. They provide the beneficial feature of dispensing a unit dose of liquid product upon activation of their dispensing mechanisms. However, it is easy to accidentally actuate these dispensers by unintentionally pushing on the piston head, for instance when carrying the dispenser in a purse or other luggage. Thus, these dispensers are more preferably for desk top or sink-side use.
Portable, personal dispensers have also been provided having flexible walls and dosing capabilities, as in U.S. Pat. No. 6,789,706 and U.S. Published Patent Application 2006/0255068. A pump communicates with a source of liquid product in a flexible wall container and also communicates with an outlet. Actuation of the pump forces liquid product out at the outlet, and release of the pump draws an additional dose of liquid product from the container to be dispensed upon a subsequent actuation. These are one component dispensers, dispensing a liquid product.
In recent years, it has become popular to dispense many liquids as foam, which is basically a mixture of at least two components, typically of air bubbles dispersed throughout a foamable liquid. Accordingly, in many environments, the standard liquid pump has given way to a foam generating pump, which necessarily requires means for combining air and liquid in such a manner as to generate the desired foam. Accordingly, in a particular embodiment this invention provides flexible wall type dispensers having the ability to dispense a dose of a foam product, thus providing a readily portable foam dispenser for personal use. As will be appreciated from following disclosure, the invention is not limited to foam dispensers, and, instead, also covers any dispenser wherein air is to be combined with a liquid, whether to foam or for any other reason such as to create a reaction.